This quarter for Comm 350, we were asked to keep a blog among other things to get through the class. Some of these other things included: learning photoshop, dreamweaver, indesign, creating our own websites, creating a class book, making business cards and learning about different communication technologies. This class has taught me a lot of different things that are extremely valuable in terms of communicating and even furthering yourself in the business world.
The first thing that I want to talk about learning is photoshop. Some people like this program and find it really easy to use. Personally, I find it really difficult and often times frustrating to work on. There are so many different things that you can do with this program, that you could honestly spend a quarter just learning how to use it and all the different effects that you can create. For this class, we were assigned to do the pages on photoshop then attach them to dreamweaver to make our website. I wish we could have spend more in time class studying this and using it. We just use it for creating our personal website which we didn't spend a whole lot of time in class learning. I think that for future use, now that I know how do do these things I will be more enthusiastic towards it. Because of my lack of experience with these programs I often grew frustrated and went through multiple different designs before deciding on one that I really liked. When I finally decided on my layout, photoshop grew easier to use. I still wish I knew more in terms of different effects, but like I said, photoshop is a program that you could teach for a whole quarter and continually learn from.
For the class we also created a group website through a free online cite. These are a couple of the cites we were able to use :
www.wix.com
www.weebly.com
Personally, my group went with weebly. Upon completion of the website, I learned that wix was slightly easier to use and it also offers way more templates for websites that are free. I personally think it is much cooler than weebly and you can do a lot more things in terms of design. From this class, and other classes I have taken I learned that these are great resources to use if you are looking to create your own website. They are reasonably priced if you would like to pay to have your own domain and super easy to edit.
My group decided to do a website for students at WWU who are 21 and older. It can be found at this web address: http://wwu21plus.weebly.com/. It's informative, we can always go back and edit it and we can add or take away pages if we choose to. Overall, these free websites cites are great for creating fun, informative websites and they are easy to take down if you don't want them up any more.
Overall this quarter what I have learned is the skills that are gained through taking this class and learning these programs are incredibly valuable. Sure we just skim the surface of some of the programs, but overall we learn how to do a little bit of everything. We have created websites from scratch, used free templates on line, created a class book, a podcast, a business card, a brochure and a newsletter. Doing so has opened many doors to what we may be asked to do during employment or in future classes. Also for this class we were required to keep a blog, a weekly blog. This may not be as easy as one may think. Sure it is easy to blog about your experiences but to update it every week can become difficult when you are competing with life. Postsecret is a great blog that is consistently updated every Sunday. The reason I mention this blog is because, it is one of the only blogs I follow because it is consistently updated every week, and it is always interesting. That is another difficult thing about a blog, keeping it interesting. It can be difficult to keep a blog about Emerging Communications Technology interesting for everyone but that's the beauty of a blog....not everyone has to like it.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
What in the world do we do without our technology?
Let me start out by saying this, This blog assignment was entirely impossible. For this blog, as a class we were instructed to go a day without technology. Tragic. This meant, no internet surfing, no checking email, no facebook, no twitter, no cell phone, no computer, no TV, no iPad, no iPod, no Pinterest, no Netflix, nothing we did could involve a communication technology. We were then asked to reflect on our day and talk about what we did instead of use our technology. We were told that it was okay if we slipped up, just try and recover. I reccomend that people try this, it will open your eyes on just how dependent we are upon technology in our every day lives. I started this assignment yesterday afternoon, and I feel as though I have been through enough pain and torture for one day so this is me reflecting on my experience.
Normally, my day ends with me watching Netflix, and checking my email to see if there are any pressing issues that can't wait until morning. For me this was really difficult to avoid. Netflix, is a diehard habit, I seriously use it to watch an episode of something before I go to sleep everynight. Without Netflix, I slept an extra hour last night, which was very convenient and well needed I must say. Also, I didn't check my email. This was difficult because I had assignment due today that required me to email some of my group members. I tried to resist, but eventually slipped up and checked my email. I didn't want to be that one group member that isolates themselves from the rest, not cool. After that, I got my self back together and put away all my technology for the night read a little bit of a magazine and went to sleep.
In the morning, I have a ritual. Wake up, check facebook, shower, check twitter, get ready, check email, go to work. It's the same every morning and it's sad. I say this because breaking that morning ritual left me with spare time to eat breakfast, which I don't normally have, and it left me feeling disconnected. Checking facebook means knowing what is going on during the day, what people are doing, who I can make plans with later. I feel as though my generation relies so heavily on that, that we don't really know how to get in contact with people other than using Facebook. There was a time like 3 years ago, where I deactivated my facebook for 5 months. I had no social networking contact with the rest of the world. I was fine, it was actually really nice because you didn't have people posting stupid stuff for you to read and you didn't have people all up in your business if you posted something. It was nice to be without it, because it meant I wasn't being bombarded with other peoples lives constantly. Now without it, I feel like it is a severe bump in my day. I have family that I keep in contact with, and friends who I don't get to see everyday, but I get to message them on Facebook and have a converstation with them through that communication outlet.
Another thing I do in the morning is check Twitter. I'm not a big TV watcher, so I don't really know whats going on in the world through that communication outlet. However, I do follow things like CNN and USA Today on twitter, who are constantly posting what is going on in the world and even in local communities. I feel like without using Twitter today I missed out on some news, a few good jokes from Funny or Die, and some inspirational quotes to ponder during the day. In the scope of things, to me Twitter isn't as big of deal as Facebook. Essentialy, I realized it is something that I have to look at and kill time when I have time to burn. Yes, today it was inconvenient that I didn't have access to it, but overall I think I could survive without it.
The computer...no. I can honestly sit here and type to you that my day as a college student and an employee is damn near impossible without a computer. These days, all assignments are required to be typed and a large portion of them are required to be turned in using the internet (just like this one). Without a computer, I am unable to look at my assignments, check grades, do homework, turn in assignments, check email. There are a whole slew of things that I need to do to be successful on my computer. Without it, life proves to be very difficult. However, I will say (that except for work where I had to use a computer) that I didn't slip up on using. In my spare time I didn't reach for my computer as much as I reached for my phone then reminded myself that I couldn't use it. I think it's because what while I need my computer, it is not as portable and convenient as using my cell phone.
Today being at work proved to be entirely difficult. At work we have to use computers to do our job. On top of that, my boss decided that today was a great day for me to do research on a project and to explore the internet with my iPad. I thought this was ridiculous, but did it anyway because I have to work to actually get paid. This was my slip up for the day, being at work. Doing this made me realize that my job, is impossible without a computer. We can't do anything without them. On top of that, we are constantly finding better ways to improve our business through researching on the internet. If we didn't have these technologies we wouldn't be able to function as a company. I think this is really important to realize because a lot of people take for granted just how easy having a computer makes your life. I honestly can't imagine a time before we had computers and what we did instead.
Overall, I will say that truly disconnecting from technology for a day is a stretch, and very difficult to do in this day and age. Without it I found myself sleeping or reading a magazine but there were a couple of times where I reached for my phone but knew I could not look at or do anything in terms of using it. This blog experiment has however made me realize that we often times take technology for granted because it is so readily available. There is so much more stuff I am capable of doing when I have access to these things as opposed to when I don't. I felt like I was lagging, that I wasn't on top of my game, and honestly disconnected because I couldn't reply to my friends text messages and I couldn't pick up the phone when it was ringing. Also, I realized that not having this technology can cause people to worry. What I mean by that is, they may grow concerned because they don't hear a response back from you. People can start to grow very worrysome when they aren't responded to almost immediatly these days and technology has made us this way.
Normally, my day ends with me watching Netflix, and checking my email to see if there are any pressing issues that can't wait until morning. For me this was really difficult to avoid. Netflix, is a diehard habit, I seriously use it to watch an episode of something before I go to sleep everynight. Without Netflix, I slept an extra hour last night, which was very convenient and well needed I must say. Also, I didn't check my email. This was difficult because I had assignment due today that required me to email some of my group members. I tried to resist, but eventually slipped up and checked my email. I didn't want to be that one group member that isolates themselves from the rest, not cool. After that, I got my self back together and put away all my technology for the night read a little bit of a magazine and went to sleep.
In the morning, I have a ritual. Wake up, check facebook, shower, check twitter, get ready, check email, go to work. It's the same every morning and it's sad. I say this because breaking that morning ritual left me with spare time to eat breakfast, which I don't normally have, and it left me feeling disconnected. Checking facebook means knowing what is going on during the day, what people are doing, who I can make plans with later. I feel as though my generation relies so heavily on that, that we don't really know how to get in contact with people other than using Facebook. There was a time like 3 years ago, where I deactivated my facebook for 5 months. I had no social networking contact with the rest of the world. I was fine, it was actually really nice because you didn't have people posting stupid stuff for you to read and you didn't have people all up in your business if you posted something. It was nice to be without it, because it meant I wasn't being bombarded with other peoples lives constantly. Now without it, I feel like it is a severe bump in my day. I have family that I keep in contact with, and friends who I don't get to see everyday, but I get to message them on Facebook and have a converstation with them through that communication outlet.
Another thing I do in the morning is check Twitter. I'm not a big TV watcher, so I don't really know whats going on in the world through that communication outlet. However, I do follow things like CNN and USA Today on twitter, who are constantly posting what is going on in the world and even in local communities. I feel like without using Twitter today I missed out on some news, a few good jokes from Funny or Die, and some inspirational quotes to ponder during the day. In the scope of things, to me Twitter isn't as big of deal as Facebook. Essentialy, I realized it is something that I have to look at and kill time when I have time to burn. Yes, today it was inconvenient that I didn't have access to it, but overall I think I could survive without it.
The computer...no. I can honestly sit here and type to you that my day as a college student and an employee is damn near impossible without a computer. These days, all assignments are required to be typed and a large portion of them are required to be turned in using the internet (just like this one). Without a computer, I am unable to look at my assignments, check grades, do homework, turn in assignments, check email. There are a whole slew of things that I need to do to be successful on my computer. Without it, life proves to be very difficult. However, I will say (that except for work where I had to use a computer) that I didn't slip up on using. In my spare time I didn't reach for my computer as much as I reached for my phone then reminded myself that I couldn't use it. I think it's because what while I need my computer, it is not as portable and convenient as using my cell phone.
Today being at work proved to be entirely difficult. At work we have to use computers to do our job. On top of that, my boss decided that today was a great day for me to do research on a project and to explore the internet with my iPad. I thought this was ridiculous, but did it anyway because I have to work to actually get paid. This was my slip up for the day, being at work. Doing this made me realize that my job, is impossible without a computer. We can't do anything without them. On top of that, we are constantly finding better ways to improve our business through researching on the internet. If we didn't have these technologies we wouldn't be able to function as a company. I think this is really important to realize because a lot of people take for granted just how easy having a computer makes your life. I honestly can't imagine a time before we had computers and what we did instead.
Overall, I will say that truly disconnecting from technology for a day is a stretch, and very difficult to do in this day and age. Without it I found myself sleeping or reading a magazine but there were a couple of times where I reached for my phone but knew I could not look at or do anything in terms of using it. This blog experiment has however made me realize that we often times take technology for granted because it is so readily available. There is so much more stuff I am capable of doing when I have access to these things as opposed to when I don't. I felt like I was lagging, that I wasn't on top of my game, and honestly disconnected because I couldn't reply to my friends text messages and I couldn't pick up the phone when it was ringing. Also, I realized that not having this technology can cause people to worry. What I mean by that is, they may grow concerned because they don't hear a response back from you. People can start to grow very worrysome when they aren't responded to almost immediatly these days and technology has made us this way.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
technology and the world we live in today.
For this weeks blog, we were assigned to watch a couple of video's and share our thoughts on them. In order to have a full understanding of the content in this blog, I feel it is necessary to include the links to those videos to share them with the rest of the viewers. Honestly, I had no idea about this technology until after watching this video, and from the looks of it, it's sort of groundbreaking.
So, this link takes you to a video of Pattie Maes exploring the concept of a technology called Sixth Sense. There are a great amount of components that go into explaining this technology. Pattie Maes explains it much better than I could, but to summarize the product, it is a basically a mobile computer that allows you to check a great variety of things that would have other taken you more than a few minutes to do at a computer. It is a device that is to be worn around your neck that contains a camera, projector and a mirror. You then color code your fingers, tape is used in the video, but you can also use a colorful nail polish and you use your fingers as a guide for what you want to do. In this video they showed Mistry (the one who does all the work on this device) using his fingers to make the "picture" and the device snaps a picture of what is in the boundaries of his fingers.
This second link takes you to a video of Pranav Mistry, the person who works directly with the technology and expands and improves on its capabilities. In this video he talks basically about the same things as the previous video, just explains them how he see's it. All in all it is an impressive technology that allows users to instantly do something that they want to do or look up. It makes cell phones seem less than what they are, which isn't an easy task. To sum up my thoughts on the videos here, I honestly think that this technology is remarkable. I think it just goes to show how advanced our world is and just how easy technology has made everything. It is hard to think about what life like was before we had technologies like this to aid us with our everyday life.
With that being said, there are a few questions I would like to address when it comes to this technological blog.
Are we tuning out the physical world?
- In all honesty, I think we are. I think this because, from my experience my generation is engulfed in their technology. It is a rarity to go somewhere where someone doesn't have their cell phone sitting on the table right next to them. I carry my cell phone on me at all times. Partly because I am paranoid that if I don't have it, someone has stolen it or is going to steal it and the other part of me doesn't want to miss anything. Without that technology with me at all times I feel like I may miss an important phone call or text message and that isn't something that I would want to do. So yes, I do think we are tuning out the physical world because the virtual world seems to be more amusing to us.
Are we moving closer and closer to living digitally?
- Sadly, I think we are and I think the sixth sense technology as show earlier in this blog shows us that exactly. We are slowly bur surely starting to rely on the digital world for everything. To run our business, to connect with our friends, to tell us where to go, to tell us what to believe, to advertise to us, I think that in a way we already live digitally. I say this because there are some people who spend their lives in a digital world. They create a world that they would rather live in to escape from the one that they are stuck having to deal with. I think that the sixth sense technology is great in a lot of ways but at the same time I think it takes away a personality and takes away being able to think for ourselves. If we can't think for ourselves, our decisions can't be that rational. I mean, how rational can a digital device really be? I think that these devices are made with a bias, based on who creates them and for all we know we could be living the live they want us to because we rely on their technology. Overall, I don't think technology is a bad thing, I just think we need to be really careful about it or else we are going to lose a sense of self, not to mention a culture because we will all be computerized.
What are the benefits and drawbacks of living in a digital world?
- Benefits, everything is easier. For a lot of reasons living in a digital world makes things easier, it makes your problems more solvable, you never have a question about anything, and everything you would ever need is presented in front of you. The drawbacks is a totally different story. I personally feel that the drawbacks to living in a digital world outweigh the benefits of it. I feel like if we lived in a completely digital world we wouldn't be able to think for ourselves, we would lose that sense of personalization, we wouldn't know how to communicate or hold a conversation and we wouldn't know how to react to a lot of things because we wouldn't be challenged to do them. I feel like there are some aspects of a digital world that would greatly help us in our day to day life but overall you would not get my vote to live in a completely digital world, we would be like robots.
To sum up everything in this post, the sixth sense technology is amazing. It is innovative and something that would make our lives less complicated, no doubt about it. However, I think that living in a digital world would prove more challenging than beneficial and we wouldn't know how to interact with one and other because we spend most of our time interacting with a computer. I would say that everyday we are moving more and more towards living in a digital world and we need to remember to step away from the computer and act like a human being, not a robot.
So, this link takes you to a video of Pattie Maes exploring the concept of a technology called Sixth Sense. There are a great amount of components that go into explaining this technology. Pattie Maes explains it much better than I could, but to summarize the product, it is a basically a mobile computer that allows you to check a great variety of things that would have other taken you more than a few minutes to do at a computer. It is a device that is to be worn around your neck that contains a camera, projector and a mirror. You then color code your fingers, tape is used in the video, but you can also use a colorful nail polish and you use your fingers as a guide for what you want to do. In this video they showed Mistry (the one who does all the work on this device) using his fingers to make the "picture" and the device snaps a picture of what is in the boundaries of his fingers.
This second link takes you to a video of Pranav Mistry, the person who works directly with the technology and expands and improves on its capabilities. In this video he talks basically about the same things as the previous video, just explains them how he see's it. All in all it is an impressive technology that allows users to instantly do something that they want to do or look up. It makes cell phones seem less than what they are, which isn't an easy task. To sum up my thoughts on the videos here, I honestly think that this technology is remarkable. I think it just goes to show how advanced our world is and just how easy technology has made everything. It is hard to think about what life like was before we had technologies like this to aid us with our everyday life.
With that being said, there are a few questions I would like to address when it comes to this technological blog.
Are we tuning out the physical world?
- In all honesty, I think we are. I think this because, from my experience my generation is engulfed in their technology. It is a rarity to go somewhere where someone doesn't have their cell phone sitting on the table right next to them. I carry my cell phone on me at all times. Partly because I am paranoid that if I don't have it, someone has stolen it or is going to steal it and the other part of me doesn't want to miss anything. Without that technology with me at all times I feel like I may miss an important phone call or text message and that isn't something that I would want to do. So yes, I do think we are tuning out the physical world because the virtual world seems to be more amusing to us.
Are we moving closer and closer to living digitally?
- Sadly, I think we are and I think the sixth sense technology as show earlier in this blog shows us that exactly. We are slowly bur surely starting to rely on the digital world for everything. To run our business, to connect with our friends, to tell us where to go, to tell us what to believe, to advertise to us, I think that in a way we already live digitally. I say this because there are some people who spend their lives in a digital world. They create a world that they would rather live in to escape from the one that they are stuck having to deal with. I think that the sixth sense technology is great in a lot of ways but at the same time I think it takes away a personality and takes away being able to think for ourselves. If we can't think for ourselves, our decisions can't be that rational. I mean, how rational can a digital device really be? I think that these devices are made with a bias, based on who creates them and for all we know we could be living the live they want us to because we rely on their technology. Overall, I don't think technology is a bad thing, I just think we need to be really careful about it or else we are going to lose a sense of self, not to mention a culture because we will all be computerized.
What are the benefits and drawbacks of living in a digital world?
- Benefits, everything is easier. For a lot of reasons living in a digital world makes things easier, it makes your problems more solvable, you never have a question about anything, and everything you would ever need is presented in front of you. The drawbacks is a totally different story. I personally feel that the drawbacks to living in a digital world outweigh the benefits of it. I feel like if we lived in a completely digital world we wouldn't be able to think for ourselves, we would lose that sense of personalization, we wouldn't know how to communicate or hold a conversation and we wouldn't know how to react to a lot of things because we wouldn't be challenged to do them. I feel like there are some aspects of a digital world that would greatly help us in our day to day life but overall you would not get my vote to live in a completely digital world, we would be like robots.
To sum up everything in this post, the sixth sense technology is amazing. It is innovative and something that would make our lives less complicated, no doubt about it. However, I think that living in a digital world would prove more challenging than beneficial and we wouldn't know how to interact with one and other because we spend most of our time interacting with a computer. I would say that everyday we are moving more and more towards living in a digital world and we need to remember to step away from the computer and act like a human being, not a robot.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Week 6: Building a (Free) Website.
Online website builders = awesome. I find these things to be particularly useful because it allows you to put your idea for a website out there for free, and these cites make it super easy to do so. The only one I have in depth experience with is www.weebly.com. I find it to be the easiest, because it is self explanatory and they offer a variety of different options when it comes to designing your website. I haven't had direct experience with these other websites, but I have seen some pages made with them and they turned out spectacular as well.
- www.wix.com
- www.webstarts.com
- www.moonfruit.com
This is a quick video that shows you how to use the basics of weebly, but be warned that weebly has been updated since this video was made, therefor making it look a little different in the video than the website actually looks today.
The nice thing about all these websites is that you can pretty much see what you are going to get from looking at the homepage. A lot of them offer video tutorials on their homepage to try and persuade you to use their templates and publish with them. This is an example of one of those videos, this is how weebly does it:
As of now I have built 3 websites (2 with groups, and one "fan site") on weebly, and found them to turn out very nicely and easy to use by viewers. These are the websites that I have worked on with groups
- www.thenuntilnow.weebly.com This one I worked on in my Media Literacy Class and it was used to inform audiences of the role models young girls are faced with everyday. This was the first weebly I made and what I liked about it was the easiness in putting it together. What I mean by that is that I was able to work with two other group members on this website and we never had a problem working on it at the exact same time with different computers. Also, it was entirely easy to add pictures and align them with text. Another nice thing about weebly that we were able to find out through building this website is that we were able to add picture slideshows and picture collages to make it more interesting for the viewer to look at.
The second group website that I have worked on with a group is: www.wwu21plus.weebly.com. This is a website that I worked on for this class and it's directed mainly at students of Western Washington University who are 21 and older looking for something fun to do downtown. With this website we have more variety than what's in the last website I listed. For this website we broke it down into different subjects like happy hour, bars in b-ham, safety and a calendar of monthly events. Some elements were more difficult than others, but overall we were able to put something together that was eye catching and informative for students all at the same time. It also introduces them to different places they may not have heard of before.
Overall, I think that these website builders are great for building a website because they are easy to use and provide you with most if not all of the tools you need to get your ideas out there. They make it so you can easily add pictures, slideshows, and videos through drag and drop. You can also add custom html's and put text and pictures next to each other without hassle. It is also important to know that these websites can also be used to host a website if you like, you can drop the .weebly or .wix or .whatever and make it your very own website, but know that once you do this they are no longer free.
- www.wix.com
- www.webstarts.com
- www.moonfruit.com
This is a quick video that shows you how to use the basics of weebly, but be warned that weebly has been updated since this video was made, therefor making it look a little different in the video than the website actually looks today.
The nice thing about all these websites is that you can pretty much see what you are going to get from looking at the homepage. A lot of them offer video tutorials on their homepage to try and persuade you to use their templates and publish with them. This is an example of one of those videos, this is how weebly does it:
As of now I have built 3 websites (2 with groups, and one "fan site") on weebly, and found them to turn out very nicely and easy to use by viewers. These are the websites that I have worked on with groups
- www.thenuntilnow.weebly.com This one I worked on in my Media Literacy Class and it was used to inform audiences of the role models young girls are faced with everyday. This was the first weebly I made and what I liked about it was the easiness in putting it together. What I mean by that is that I was able to work with two other group members on this website and we never had a problem working on it at the exact same time with different computers. Also, it was entirely easy to add pictures and align them with text. Another nice thing about weebly that we were able to find out through building this website is that we were able to add picture slideshows and picture collages to make it more interesting for the viewer to look at.
The second group website that I have worked on with a group is: www.wwu21plus.weebly.com. This is a website that I worked on for this class and it's directed mainly at students of Western Washington University who are 21 and older looking for something fun to do downtown. With this website we have more variety than what's in the last website I listed. For this website we broke it down into different subjects like happy hour, bars in b-ham, safety and a calendar of monthly events. Some elements were more difficult than others, but overall we were able to put something together that was eye catching and informative for students all at the same time. It also introduces them to different places they may not have heard of before.
Overall, I think that these website builders are great for building a website because they are easy to use and provide you with most if not all of the tools you need to get your ideas out there. They make it so you can easily add pictures, slideshows, and videos through drag and drop. You can also add custom html's and put text and pictures next to each other without hassle. It is also important to know that these websites can also be used to host a website if you like, you can drop the .weebly or .wix or .whatever and make it your very own website, but know that once you do this they are no longer free.
Monday, January 30, 2012
social media, and the world we live in today.
Let me start off by saying this video is great:
I have used this video (from prevous years) in a lot of my other comm classes because the way we communicate with each other is changing each and every day. I took an interesting class last quarter which was media literacy or Comm 444. It was one of the most eye opening classes I have taken while at Western Washington University and it continues to probe my interest in social media and what kind of effect it has on us as scholars and individuals.
The video above makes a powerful statement and that is "Social media isn't a fad, its a fundamental shift in the way we communicate." I cannot help but to agree with this statement. It is pretty obvious that the way we communicate has changed significantly in the 21 years that I have been around. I know that, my parents know that and my grandparents know that. I find it comical that the older generation that I surround myself with is astnoished at some of the stuff I can do on a computer when they couldn't even dream of doing what I can do, and all I know are the basics.
There are quite a few articles out there talking about how social media is changing the way we communicate and how it has made out generation stick out from all the rest, but I have my own opinions about a few of the bigger social networking cites that are all mostly household names by now. Those include: facebook, twitter, youtube, linked in and blogger.com.
Facebook:
In my opinion, facebook is the most popular social networking cite that is out there. In the video, it stated that if facebook was a nation it would be the third largest nation in the world. Before there was facebook, there was myspace but that has fizzled out over time. Facebook has made it so that you can have a bunch of friends, keep in contact with people around the world, and share what is going on in your daily life. There are plenty of businesses and corporations that use facebook to get their information out there, which is great because they can reach the younger generation and reach a very wide array of people as compared to other media outlets.
In terms of facebook and social media, I think that it is an extremely useful tool for getting a message out there. At the same time it does have it's downfalls if you don't know how to use it. Nothing is worse than people posting negative things, or terrible pictures. Doing that sort of thing can ruin someone, literally. As a student hoping for a career in the future, I really need to watch what I say and what I do on facebook. Employers look at that sort of thing, and wether you like it or not, they judge you and decide if they want you at their company or not. All in all, I believe that facebook can either help you or hurt you in terms of careers, you just need to be aware of what you are doing and how you are portraying yourself online. One's something is on the internet it is difficult to take it down.
Twitter:
I don't understand. I have a twitter account, and honestly all I use twitter for is to follow people and see what is going on in the lives of celebrities. I have talked to other students, and it is possible to use twitter to further your career. It can be used to follow professionals in your area of study, and you can have a heads up on what kinds of events are going to be coming up. At the same time, twitter can have the same downfall as facebook in terms of putting yourself out there. I think that in all social media and networking we have to be careful what we post because it is possible that someone is always watching. With that being said, I feel as though there are also a great deal of benefits in participating in social media because there is so much information out there. Being on these websites causes that kind of important information to find us, and though we may not like it...there is really nothing we can do about it.
LinkedIn:
I haven't spent much time on this cite but what I have gathered from being at Western is that I need too. There are professionals on this website that are scouting for people to come work for their company. The video at the beginning of this blog said it best, a large percentage of employers look for their future employees on LinkedIn. This is a forum for us to present ourselves in the best way that we can and to connect with people who are in similar careers or are in careers that we would like to be in someday. This cite is very different from twitter and facebook, and I think that is great. It is a professional set up and is something that as college students we can really use to our benefit. In my final quarters at Western I plan to build up my profile in the hopes of getting a job in the field I have studied. I think that LinkedIn is a view into the future. Before school I had never heard of it, and because of that I think that this website gives students a leg up on the competition. This is a great tool for finding a job and I see it getting bigger and bigger in the future. It is a solid example of how social media has changed the way we communicate.
Blogger.com
I am new to this, but I have wanted to blog for a while now. I know now that it is very easy to do and plan on doing it for a very long time. With that being said, it is important to be knowledgeable about what you are posting so that you don't get yourself into trouble. It is the same basic concept as facebook and twitter. What you post can come back to haunt you and that is something you don't want if you are trying to get a job.
Overall, I think that social media has had a huge impact on the world we live in today. We are bombarded with images, advertisements and everything else on the internet every single day and this has brought about social change. We have changed in the way we consume products and we have changed in the way we put ourself and our business out there. We are able to start social revolutions, we are able to spark a thought in a lot of peoples minds with just a simple status update. All that being said, social media has made it so that we can easily put ourselves out there and it has changed the way we further ourselves in terms of careers. This can be a great thing because the doors for opportunity are opened more because of our ability to put our ideas and personalities out there.
I have used this video (from prevous years) in a lot of my other comm classes because the way we communicate with each other is changing each and every day. I took an interesting class last quarter which was media literacy or Comm 444. It was one of the most eye opening classes I have taken while at Western Washington University and it continues to probe my interest in social media and what kind of effect it has on us as scholars and individuals.
The video above makes a powerful statement and that is "Social media isn't a fad, its a fundamental shift in the way we communicate." I cannot help but to agree with this statement. It is pretty obvious that the way we communicate has changed significantly in the 21 years that I have been around. I know that, my parents know that and my grandparents know that. I find it comical that the older generation that I surround myself with is astnoished at some of the stuff I can do on a computer when they couldn't even dream of doing what I can do, and all I know are the basics.
There are quite a few articles out there talking about how social media is changing the way we communicate and how it has made out generation stick out from all the rest, but I have my own opinions about a few of the bigger social networking cites that are all mostly household names by now. Those include: facebook, twitter, youtube, linked in and blogger.com.
Facebook:
In my opinion, facebook is the most popular social networking cite that is out there. In the video, it stated that if facebook was a nation it would be the third largest nation in the world. Before there was facebook, there was myspace but that has fizzled out over time. Facebook has made it so that you can have a bunch of friends, keep in contact with people around the world, and share what is going on in your daily life. There are plenty of businesses and corporations that use facebook to get their information out there, which is great because they can reach the younger generation and reach a very wide array of people as compared to other media outlets.
In terms of facebook and social media, I think that it is an extremely useful tool for getting a message out there. At the same time it does have it's downfalls if you don't know how to use it. Nothing is worse than people posting negative things, or terrible pictures. Doing that sort of thing can ruin someone, literally. As a student hoping for a career in the future, I really need to watch what I say and what I do on facebook. Employers look at that sort of thing, and wether you like it or not, they judge you and decide if they want you at their company or not. All in all, I believe that facebook can either help you or hurt you in terms of careers, you just need to be aware of what you are doing and how you are portraying yourself online. One's something is on the internet it is difficult to take it down.
Twitter:
I don't understand. I have a twitter account, and honestly all I use twitter for is to follow people and see what is going on in the lives of celebrities. I have talked to other students, and it is possible to use twitter to further your career. It can be used to follow professionals in your area of study, and you can have a heads up on what kinds of events are going to be coming up. At the same time, twitter can have the same downfall as facebook in terms of putting yourself out there. I think that in all social media and networking we have to be careful what we post because it is possible that someone is always watching. With that being said, I feel as though there are also a great deal of benefits in participating in social media because there is so much information out there. Being on these websites causes that kind of important information to find us, and though we may not like it...there is really nothing we can do about it.
LinkedIn:
I haven't spent much time on this cite but what I have gathered from being at Western is that I need too. There are professionals on this website that are scouting for people to come work for their company. The video at the beginning of this blog said it best, a large percentage of employers look for their future employees on LinkedIn. This is a forum for us to present ourselves in the best way that we can and to connect with people who are in similar careers or are in careers that we would like to be in someday. This cite is very different from twitter and facebook, and I think that is great. It is a professional set up and is something that as college students we can really use to our benefit. In my final quarters at Western I plan to build up my profile in the hopes of getting a job in the field I have studied. I think that LinkedIn is a view into the future. Before school I had never heard of it, and because of that I think that this website gives students a leg up on the competition. This is a great tool for finding a job and I see it getting bigger and bigger in the future. It is a solid example of how social media has changed the way we communicate.
Blogger.com
I am new to this, but I have wanted to blog for a while now. I know now that it is very easy to do and plan on doing it for a very long time. With that being said, it is important to be knowledgeable about what you are posting so that you don't get yourself into trouble. It is the same basic concept as facebook and twitter. What you post can come back to haunt you and that is something you don't want if you are trying to get a job.
Overall, I think that social media has had a huge impact on the world we live in today. We are bombarded with images, advertisements and everything else on the internet every single day and this has brought about social change. We have changed in the way we consume products and we have changed in the way we put ourself and our business out there. We are able to start social revolutions, we are able to spark a thought in a lot of peoples minds with just a simple status update. All that being said, social media has made it so that we can easily put ourselves out there and it has changed the way we further ourselves in terms of careers. This can be a great thing because the doors for opportunity are opened more because of our ability to put our ideas and personalities out there.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Audacity...awesomeness.
When I first started going to college I set out to be a Radio Personality, that dream has since changed. I bring up the career of Radio broadcasting because audacity has opened my eyes to that career once again. What Audacity is, is awesome. This program, which is a free download online, allows you to record yourself, make extremely easy edits and to add music without any difficulty while using it. We were introduced to this program in my Comm 350 class this week, and I am very excited to use it. I downloaded it on my personal computer today, from this website:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
It was super easy and pretty self explanatory. I started using it right away to work on the assignments for class. I think that this program is super helpful and can be super useful when it comes to putting your voice out there and having your ideas heard.
Like I said before, this program also allows you to add sound effects or music to compliment your recording. In terms of using music, I have been taught that you should stick to using free music. This is due to copyright issues and you don't want to use someone elses music if you don't have permission. One of my previous instructors put entire fear in me when it came to using others music for my own projects. There are way to many rules when it comes to using other peoples stuff, so stick to the free cites. We were shown a couple of great websites in class (I'll link to them below) but there are many other ones out there to be discovered and used. Another quick thing about music that I have gathered from my classes is, if you want to use copywritten music just don't use more than 30 seconds of it. So just sample it or make it quick, try to refrain from using the entire song.
Free Music Links:
http://www.pacdv.com/sounds/index.html
http://www.freemusicbeds.com/
I found these cites to be really useful, and they literally have hundreds of different sound effects that you can use and easily upload to Audacity.
In my previous post's I have mentioned other programs that we have used in my Comm 350 class, photoshop being one of them. Out of the programs I have used so far I find that Audacity is the easiest to use so far. I would explain it, but it really is self explanitory when you begin using it. It's a simple press to record and you can easily edit your recordings by simpling selecting an area, adding to it or deleting it, it all depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
Music is easily added and edited by using the different tools in the top left corner.
With that being said, I am throughouly amused and impressed with Audacity. It is easy to use and has inspired me to look more into podcasts and start listening to them. I have never really listened to them, but after seeing how easily they can be created, I am sure that people have put a lot of good and interesting information out there.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
It was super easy and pretty self explanatory. I started using it right away to work on the assignments for class. I think that this program is super helpful and can be super useful when it comes to putting your voice out there and having your ideas heard.
Like I said before, this program also allows you to add sound effects or music to compliment your recording. In terms of using music, I have been taught that you should stick to using free music. This is due to copyright issues and you don't want to use someone elses music if you don't have permission. One of my previous instructors put entire fear in me when it came to using others music for my own projects. There are way to many rules when it comes to using other peoples stuff, so stick to the free cites. We were shown a couple of great websites in class (I'll link to them below) but there are many other ones out there to be discovered and used. Another quick thing about music that I have gathered from my classes is, if you want to use copywritten music just don't use more than 30 seconds of it. So just sample it or make it quick, try to refrain from using the entire song.
Free Music Links:
http://www.pacdv.com/sounds/index.html
http://www.freemusicbeds.com/
I found these cites to be really useful, and they literally have hundreds of different sound effects that you can use and easily upload to Audacity.
In my previous post's I have mentioned other programs that we have used in my Comm 350 class, photoshop being one of them. Out of the programs I have used so far I find that Audacity is the easiest to use so far. I would explain it, but it really is self explanitory when you begin using it. It's a simple press to record and you can easily edit your recordings by simpling selecting an area, adding to it or deleting it, it all depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
Music is easily added and edited by using the different tools in the top left corner.
With that being said, I am throughouly amused and impressed with Audacity. It is easy to use and has inspired me to look more into podcasts and start listening to them. I have never really listened to them, but after seeing how easily they can be created, I am sure that people have put a lot of good and interesting information out there.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
CRAP! or... Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity.
This week's blog is a little later than it is supposed to be and I take full responsibility for that. However, I do live in the great north and it has snowed like crazy here and I happened to not have power for a little while causing this blog to be past it's due date. I will however prevail and post regardless. Today's or rather, this weeks blog is about C.R.A.P. otherwise known as Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity. These are the four basic design principles when it comes to designing anything. In my cause it directly relates to the website I am building for COMM 350 at WWU.
The first website that I found t be really useful (and one that I actually printed for my portfolio) was this one:
http://www.presentationzen.com/chapter6_spread.pdf This website gives a pretty good rundown of what these design principles are and I thought it gave really good visual aids.
The second website that I found to be useful was this one:
http://www.plu.edu/~scotttj/designkiosk.pdf
I'm pretty sure this was done by a student, but regardless it still has very good information. The information presented on this website comes from The non-designers design book by Robin Williams, Not the celebrity in movie Robin Williams, it's an actual author. =]
I actually have this book and find it to be really useful with it comes to design. There are tons of great tips and visual aids to help you when it comes to designing anything that you need in the professional, or personal world for that matter.
The last website that I recommend for this concept is:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/design-better-with-crap.html
This website gives a pretty good rundown of what Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity is and talks about how they work together to make something successful.
Overall these are pretty important concepts to understand because they can aid in making effective visual aids and make your website, or anything else that you use professionally successful. These concepts make sure that you get your point across, but at the same time do it in a way that is visually appealing and catches the eye of the reader or viewer.
Once again, my sincere apologies for the late blog, it will never happen again as log as this quarter lasts.!
The first website that I found t be really useful (and one that I actually printed for my portfolio) was this one:
http://www.presentationzen.com/chapter6_spread.pdf This website gives a pretty good rundown of what these design principles are and I thought it gave really good visual aids.
The second website that I found to be useful was this one:
http://www.plu.edu/~scotttj/designkiosk.pdf
I'm pretty sure this was done by a student, but regardless it still has very good information. The information presented on this website comes from The non-designers design book by Robin Williams, Not the celebrity in movie Robin Williams, it's an actual author. =]
I actually have this book and find it to be really useful with it comes to design. There are tons of great tips and visual aids to help you when it comes to designing anything that you need in the professional, or personal world for that matter.
The last website that I recommend for this concept is:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/design-better-with-crap.html
This website gives a pretty good rundown of what Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity is and talks about how they work together to make something successful.
Overall these are pretty important concepts to understand because they can aid in making effective visual aids and make your website, or anything else that you use professionally successful. These concepts make sure that you get your point across, but at the same time do it in a way that is visually appealing and catches the eye of the reader or viewer.
Once again, my sincere apologies for the late blog, it will never happen again as log as this quarter lasts.!
Friday, January 13, 2012
Photoshop!
This week in my Communication 350 class some of us, including myself, got to know the wonderful program title Photoshop. We only learned the basics of the system but just learning those basics was enough of a start to want to learn more. During the class we talked about looking at the page you are working on as a collection of layers. This is helpful because it makes it so that you can look at the page you are working on as a bunch of different sections and move them around accordingly. Here is a website and a quick youtube video that I found helpful understand the concepts of photoshop layers.
Website: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/photoshop/cs/using/WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-78e3a.html
Kind of long, but worth it because it is straight from the adobe website.
YouTube Video: This is a quick 4 minute video that gives viewers the basics when it comes to layers in photoshop.
Website: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/photoshop/cs/using/WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-78e3a.html
Kind of long, but worth it because it is straight from the adobe website.
YouTube Video: This is a quick 4 minute video that gives viewers the basics when it comes to layers in photoshop.
The second thing that we learned about this week in class was Text Effects. There are so many things that you can do with text using photoshop. For some reason I found these effects particularly difficult to do without some additional help. What I found most difficult was that there are so many different things you can do with photoshop that you often don't know where to start. Where I ended up starting was this website: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/50-great-photoshop-text-effect-tutorials-part-ii/ from this link you can basically choose what text effect you like the best, or want to use then select it. After you select it the website walks you through how to create this text effect on photoshop.
Reading about it can be helpful but I found myself going back and fourth between pages which was somewhat annoying. Fortunately there are a lot of videos on YouTube to help with text effects which you can listen to and then do at the same time. I found this almost to be more helpful than the website. Some of the videos are longer depending on what text effect you want to use, but well worth it because these things turn out really cool. Here is a 5 minute video that gives a basic rundown on how to do a text effect.:
Photoshop and Dreamweaver were what we started to learn this week, but we just scratched the surface. There are so many different things that can be done with these programs but this is just some of the basic information that I got from class this week. There are plenty of sources out there if you want to get more advanced with your techniques or if you just want to do different techniques in terms of what you are creating. That's all for this week.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Top 10 Rules for a Website and Introduction
My name is Carli and I am studying Communication at Western Washington University. I recently took part in a class where we had to design out own websites, and it turned out to be very informative. This quarter I am taking a similar class, but one that goes more in depth into what a website should be and all the different aspects of designing one.
The website I worked on with other group members can be seen here: http://thenuntilnow.weebly.com/.
From working on this website I realized that it takes a lot more than what I thought to put together a decent website. For this blog I will also being discussing 10 of the rules I would go by when creating a website. Part of the assignment for my new Comm class is to discuss these things so here it goes.
1. Planning is critical: It's critical because if you don't have a plan for the website, it's difficult to know where to start.
2. Pick a few major points and stick to them: Doing this makes it so the website is clean and easy to navigate.
3. Pick a layout that is attention grabbing: you want something that will attract the viewers eye so they don't navigate do a different cite due to boredom.
4. Try to use colors that relate to what you are presenting online: Nothing is more distracting than a random color scheme.
5. Put valuable information on your website, but don't make it too wordy: Too many words makes the viewer want to do something else. No one wants to read through a website for hours unless they have to for a school or work requirement.
6. Add pictures! : Visual aids are the best, enough said.
7: Make the website interactive: If you give the viewers something to do that will grab there attention it will give them more incentive to come back. Example being....Facebook?
8. Page should be complete: There shouldn't be any loose ends or something that is "under construction."
9. Test your target audience: When developing a new website test it on who you want your target audience to be and ask their feedback, this will make it so you can revise your site based on the feedback.
10. Revision: Go through and make sure everything is just the way you want it to be and revise it based on feedback or comments you have received.
This top ten list is strictly what I would reccommend when developing a website, these are the tips that I find most useful and are purely based on experience. =]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)